CIRCULATING INTERLEUKIN-6 LEVELS ARE ELEVATED IN ADULT T-CELL LEUKAEMIA LYMPHOMA PATIENTS AND CORRELATE WITH ADVERSE CLINICAL-FEATURES AND SURVIVAL/

We measured the circulating levels of interleukin (IL)-6 in adult T-ce ll leukaemia/lymphoma (ATL) patients using an enzyme-linked immunosorb ent assay, The IL-6 levels in 59 ATL patients (median 8.2 pg/ml; range < 1.0 to 185.7 pg/ml) were significantly higher than in 30 healthy co ntrols (median <1.0 pg/ml; range <1.0 to 3.5 pg/ml) (P<0.0001) or 12 h uman T-lymphotropic virus type-I (HTLV-I) carriers (median 4.2 pg/ml; range <1.0 to 13.3 pg/ml) (P=0.002), Among the ATL patients, the IL-6 levels in the acute-or lymphoma-type patients were significantly highe r than those in the chronic-type patients (P<0.0001). The IL-6 levels were also higher in the patients with B symptoms than in those without B symptoms (P = 0.039), and were significantly correlated with increa sed serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) (P=0.0004) and C-reactive protei n (CRP) (P<0.0001) and decreased serum albumin (P=0.0003) values. The patients with elevated IL-6 levels had inferior overall survival perio ds compared to those with normal IL-6 levels (P=0.025). ATL is a singl e disease entity, although its clinical features are quite diverse: th e increased production of cytokines may cause the diversity of clinica l features, The results of our study indicate that IL-6 is one such cy tokine.